Merchandising displays are commonly used in supermarkets as well as in other types of stores to display and merchandise items such as beverages which are generally handled as self-service items. Quite commonly and for many years such items have been displayed and merchandised in racks wherein the products are arranged on shelves in adjacent rows parallel to the shelf's front edge with the shelf sloping downwardly from the rear to the front such that when customers remove product from the front edge of the shelf, the product to the rear of the removed product automatically slides forward to the front of the shelf. Such an arrangement for displaying and merchandising beverages is disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,809,855, assigned to the assignee of this application. In this patent, sliding of the displayed merchandise to the front of the shelf is facilitated by a low friction slip surface mounted upon the top of the shelf for supporting the displayed product.
Another alternative to the use of a slip surface to facilitate gravity feed of displayed merchandise to the front of a sloping shelf is disclosed in Reissue U.S. Pat. No. RE30,706, also assigned to the assignee of this application. According to the disclosure of this patent, the displayed product is mounted upon a plurality of parallel endless conveyor belts arranged so as to be movable in a direction perpendicular to the shelf's front edge. The inside surface of the belts which rides over a supporting floor has a low coefficient of friction while the outside surface of the belt upon which the displayed product rests has a higher coefficient of friction. When the forwardmost displayed product on the belt is removed, the low friction coefficient on the belt's inside surface facilitates gravity feed or movement of the remaining product supported upon the belt, causing the belt and remaining product to slide forwardly over the stationary supporting surface to the front of the supporting surface until the product contacts a stationary abutment at the front of the sloping supporting surface. The use of the belt according to the disclosure of this patent enables the product to slide forwardly to the front of the shelf without any relative movement between the products and potential for impact of one product against another during the course of forward movement on the sloping shelf.
Another patent which discloses another technique for automatically moving product to the front of a shelf of a display in response to removal of the front product on the shelf is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,351,439, also assigned to the assignee of this application. According to the disclosure of this patent, the product is supported upon a belt on a horizontal shelf. The rearwardmost product in a column of products supported upon the belt is biased forwardly by a spring, similar to a window shade spring such that when the forwardmost product is removed from the column supported upon the belt, the belt is moved forwardly until the next forwardmost product abuts a stationary abutment at the front of the shelf.
Generally, gravity or spring biased automatic forward feed displays wherein the product is automatically moved to the front of a shelf in response to removal of the forwardmost displayed product on the shelf have been utilized in open-type displays wherein the forwardmost products are easily accessible. Such automatic forward feed displays have also been used in refrigerated cabinets, but when so used, the design of the cabinet has been severely restricted by the need to have large doors at the front of the cabinet in order to provide access to a relatively large quantity of stored product within the cabinet. Otherwise expressed, if there are ten columns of product displayed in a prior art refrigerated cabinet, then the access door of the cabinet has been ten columns wide. This means that if the product is refrigerated, a large quantity of refrigerated air necessarily escapes every time the door is opened. Or alternatively, if a small door is to be utilized, then only a relatively small number of columns of product may be stored within the cabinet and automatically moved to the front so as to be accessible through that small door.
It has therefore been an objective of this invention to provide an improved method and apparatus for gravity feeding product to the front of a merchandising display so as to enable a greater quantity of product to be accessed through a smaller opening, or alternatively, a greater quantity of product to be accessed at the front of the merchandising display.
Still another objective of this invention has been to provide an improved rotatable shelf display which is operative to automatically gravity feed product to the front of the rotatable shelf.
Still another objective of this invention has been to provide a refrigerated merchandising display wherein a large quantity of product may be gravity fed to the front of the refrigerated display and accessed through a relatively small door.
The invention of this application which accomplishes these objectives comprises a merchandising display having a rotatable shelf assembly that automatically gravity feeds displayed product to the front of the shelf as the product is successively removed from the front of the shelf by a customer. This display comprises a housing for rotatably supporting at least one shelf and a shelf supported from the housing in a plane slightly tilted out of a horizontal plane for rotation about an axis which is slightly tilted relative to a vertical plane, the tilt of the shelf being such that the lowest point on the tilted shelf is located at the front of the shelf such that when product supported on the shelf is removed from the front of the shelf the weight of the remaining product on the shelf automatically causes the shelf to rotate to reposition the remaining product at the front of the shelf. Otherwise expressed, when product is removed from the front of the shelf, the shelf automatically rotates in response to removal of the product from the front to locate new product at the front of the shelf.
The invention of this application also comprises a method of gravity feeding displayed product to the front of a rotatable shelf of a merchandising display as product is successively removed from the front of the shelf by a customer. This method comprises supporting the shelf from a low friction support for rotation about an axis slightly tilted relative to a vertical plane with the shelf slightly tilted relative to a horizontal plane, the orientation of the shelf being such that the low point on the shelf is at the front of the shelf so that when displayed product is removed from the front of the shelf, the weight of product remaining on the shelf causes the shelf to rotate so as to relocate new product to the front of the shelf.
The primary advantage of the invention of this application is that it enables a maximum quantity of product to be automatically gravity fed to a single location at the front of the display. When utilized in a refrigerated cabinet, this invention enables a large quantity of product to be stored within the cabinet and gravity fed to one or more openings or doors on the cabinet which may be minimally sized while still facilitating access to a large quantity of product.